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It was a three hour round trip and a rare day off for me, but the sun is still shining in Scotland and a lovely 24deg :) The trip across country was beautiful, the winding road cut around the hills, across rivers and streams, the country side is lush green and overgrown due to how much rain we usually get!There was no green in Simply Create, lots of pink and black, pink cup cakes and pink bubbly. Lots of faces I knew and a few new ones too. Thanks girls I had a great day out, and I did come home with a few things...................charms{ cant get enough of those}stamps...............yes I had to have a few crazy cute Ketto stamps from the lovely Emily over at Stamping Bella, I "met" Emily not long after she started her business and we were not far behind her with Sugar Nellie. I was please to bump into her on SCS and one of these days I am going to having that long chat over coffee and muffin with her :)

The top crafty blog police are looking for more crafting tips and techniques on blogs, so after my little shopping trip what would be my tip for you today........Buy double sided papers as it gives you twice the patterns for your money, they co ordinated and mat and layer perfectly, not much thought involved matching it to other papers. I do tend to do very little scrapbooking these days so as a card maker I only buy one sheet of each, more than enough to make several cards and then I get to play with something different.

Things in the House of Sugar should become easier next week with two new "elfs" arriving to take their places at Funkykits, leaving me to get back to my desk and to Sugar Nellie business.

One thing I do need is a bigger design team. Not long after we started we had three members, Marlene, Tiets and Katherina, after Katherina left to start her own rubber stamp company, we never filled her space and now its time to share out the sugar and look for a "few" new members to take the pressure off Tiets and Marlene as Sugar Nellie launches more and more ranges I am sure it's hard for them to keep up and still enjoy their hobby.

I will post a thread on SCS with more details later and how you can apply if you would like.

The basics are simple, do you love making cards & blogging?Are you a imaginative crafter who is not attached to any other stamp company?Do you have plenty of time on your hands?

If you can answer YES to all three then you are in with a chance. Open to everyone everywhere world wide. Who knows , maybe next year it could be you getting ready for a busmen's holiday to CHA with the Sugar Babes!

I have been waiting for almost a month for an order of Copic's, and not a small order at that, but today after they eventually phoned to say that it had been lost in the system and did I still want it!, obviously "customer is queen" is not a mantra they chant at that wholesaler.Who would have guessed that some craft companies are struggling in our economic climate here in the UK and would have been pleased to receive a paid before dispatch order of that size.................gggrrrrrr............so in the end I said no, very disappointed in their service and now I want to go shopping for some copics, as I have promised these as gifts.

Which web site do you recommend?

Planning a little day trip tomorrow into Aberdeen shire to deliver a few sweet things for the opening of SIMPLY CREATE a new fabulous stamp store in Alford opening on Saturday. All sugar babes welcome but be sure to join us on 20th June for a Sugar Nellie event in Alford.

I was delighted to discover the talented artist Diane Duda earlier this year. Due to unfortunate staffing circumstances I have not give Diane the attention she deserves, as the newest illustrator at Sugar Nellie she has a launch of completely new and original stamps coming next month. You can see Diane's delightful artwork on her blog http://dudadaze.blogspot.com/ , stop by and say hello.

Diane has also kindly donated an image for our "Its a girl thing" breast cancer fundraiser which you are going to love if you are lucky enough to get hold of one as they will be limited in numbers.

.........and while reading her blog I noticed these, ain't they cute and funky!

So I went along to etsy and found them, needless to say I had to have one :)

So can I ask you to go have a look at Diane's etsy and let me know which artwork you would like to see made into a stamp. A little guidance goes a long way and with so much cute whimsical characters to choose from it would be great to narrow it down a little. What about frogs? We have no frogs in the House of Sugar. Birdies..............boys?

At long last we received a delivery of rubber in the house of sugar this week, not we have to decide what to cut and pack first. The elf's have been busy over the weekend and FUNKYKITS, did get part of their order of Gorjuss girls late on Saturday and the rest will be ready late Monday or Tuesday. So if you have been waiting for single girls they are available now. There are plenty of other restocks being packed too, so lots of choice for sugar addicts worldwide.

More stock too of the sold out COUNTRY COUSINS, Tiets has been busy with the Home Grown stamps, here are a few from her blog, pop over to see more.

All is well, things are calm, I am slowly working my way through the mountain of paper work and things to do. The new computers are working much faster making life easier. Still a lot to catch up with but I can now see things clearer. Even had time for coffee and muffins this week!

A constant stream of rubber is being delivered weekly, the elf's come in on a Saturday and cut and pack. Funkykits continue to want more more more , so you must be loving the new stamps and we keep sending them over as fast as the elf's can pack them.

Candy went out today to our three blog winners, enjoy your sweet stamps girls. I have two more big gifts to send to special people but I am just waiting for a few loose ends before gift wrapping their pressies ;)

*New stamps being created, designed and tested. I have seen the next batch from Mary Hall, you asked for teen stamps and Mary has done a great job with these.**Gorjuss, yes we have our third set coming in late June.***Fundraiser for Breast Cancer UK, still working on that.****AND last but not least the very exciting first range of stamps by Diane Duda, these make me smile, so much fun I know your going to love them all.

My diary is filling up with events, features and days away planned this summer.

I hope that you have something good planned for the coming months, it will not be long before the schools are finished for the summer. Were does the time go, must change my watch, it still says January! ( sign of old age)

I would hope by now that readers of this blog know that our own challenge blog, The Sugar Bowl run by Gayle, gives away great prizes for those that choose to take part in the challenges they set.

Recently the SWEETIES decided to make it a sketch challenge and I am amazed at all the lovely work done by the team and by the crafters who enter.

Thank you girls you are extremely talented :)

The winner is a random number so it does not matter if you are new to card making or more worldly wise, each one of you have the same chance of winning.

We quietly sent the new Leanne Ellis stamps over to Funkykits and by now I am sure that some of you have your inky mitts on these wonder stamps.:)

Marlene does tend to get her DT package before Tiets as the post takes a little longer to reach Netherlands. Today I received two wonderful boxes of DT cards from Tiets and Marlene, the work involved is quiet something, no wonder I dare not show you anything that I make!

We have a heat wave here in Scotland 19deg. today and that makes for a lovely day out of the wind!

I am catching up with things slowly, I hope to have the new computer up and working tonight and while we wait for the overdue rubber to arrive in the House of Sugar, I am spending the time answering many emails and shufflin' paperwork.

It will soon be time to think about booking the Sugar Babes trip to CHA in Orlando this July, flight prices are still not looking attractive enough to book but I will not stress yet, plenty of time.

So with the sun shining and my workload slowly getting easier, time for a little candy.With an amazing 500+ followers on this blog, I had better make it tasty :)

My question to you is ...................................what's your top tip for a new cardmaker?

Magazines in the UK are very unlike those elsewhere. But for a variety of work for the more adventurist of stampers there is no question, Craft Stamper is the best UK magazine.

We have a good relationship with the folks over at CS, you will often find features with our stamps, sometimes it is something we are involved in, other times its their DT that choose to use Sugar Nellie with out us knowing :)

But we did know that Marlene has a gorjuss feature in the latest issue out now, but I have not seen it yet!

From our very talented and lovely DT girls, Tiets and Marlene, here are the first cards I have seen using our new range called Country Cousins, these are beautiful and the details in the art work is amazing, we are very proud to be able to bring you more and more amazing stamps.

These are Country Garden and Fragile Beauty with an RRP of £4.75 these are great value and they are the best quality real rubber, just trim at home and add foam mounting if you need too. I just attache to my acrylic block with a glue stick, everything is washable afterwards.

There are 5 stamps in this range, we have launched them quietly just because we can not seem to satisfy demand and the disappointment for the customers over on www.funkykits.co.uk when they sell out so quick is frustrating. Everything will come back into stock, just have a little patience while the little elf's pack the rubber.

Here is another little peek of one of my favourite new designs , STITCH, sorry that you are not seeing much of it but I have not had time to learn how to watermark pictures yet. If you have a look back at Leanne's blog you might get an idea of others that are coming too. :)

There are no pre orders, so many stampers have asked about this, its only gorjuss kits that we operate a pre order system because we could not guess the response they would have.

We expected the eight new Leanne Ellis stamps to with us today, but maybe the Monday holiday is effecting deliveries. Maybe by the end of the week we can have them over to Funkykits, lets just see what this week brings.

And I am sure that these peeks of Leanne's new designs will please you all. There are eight new stamps due in the first half of May and I am very pleased with these, a touch more "arty" than we are used to but still great stamp designs.

We are very short on stock at the moment and Funkykits have a long list of stamps they want to order to keep you all satisfied. We are working on it as fast as our little fingers can cut and pack them :)

We attempted to set up a new computer at work today, nothing went to plan and we will start again tomorrow. The House of Sugar was very quiet for a bank holiday Monday, I hope you enjoyed any extra time off you had this weekend.

BOGOF! for those who think that's a rude word, its not :)Buy One Get One Free....................it does not get better than that.I have several prints myself, some given as gifts the others I needed because they are so GORJUSS. Which ones have you collected?